Working 9 to 5

Let’s all start by saying we wish we worked 9-5. I’m more like 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. How about you? But hey, it pays the bills, and that does seem important. I make more money working more hours, not more money by the hour. Welcome to the blue collar world. Still, I love my job and am very passionate about what I do. So, I keep doing it.

But, this week was a bad week at work. It just was. Even a job you love and are passionate about can be a pretty crap job some weeks. It’s life. Work is a good thing that sometimes isn’t so good. Here’s how I handled that. I chose to be a little underhanded. Because someone picked on me, I picked on someone else. The pecking order and all that. How old am I?

Bottom line: I was mean.

I was passive aggressive about it so it’s possible the person missed it entirely. That generally flies right over a guy’s head. Women never miss a passive aggressive move. So, here’s hoping the guy I picked on didn’t notice my passive-aggressive little self. If he did, here’s hoping he noticed my bending-over-backward-to-be-nice self the following day. Because I regretted the silly behavior the second I did it. I felt childish and ridiculous. And, let’s face it, no one deserves to be picked on just because I was.

Skip to my sister’s work week and well, my passive aggressive move looks like buttered toast with a warm glass of milk. Her boss, a supposed genius, decided to take her into a closet, and use every “gd” word he could think of while reminding her who signed her check.And, this because she did something his wife instructed her to do. Obviously, trouble in paradise.

That reminder, the check, was enough to keep her silent. Oh, how I wish I had been there because he does not sign my check. I understand though. Fear of losing one’s job, the very thing that puts food on the table is nerve-racking, and causes us to devalue ourselves enough to allow some crazed idiot to scream in our faces, and call us names. So long as that tirade doesn’t end with you’re fired, we’ll stand there and take it because we need the work. I will. I wouldn’t have opened my mouth with the bi-polar boss calling me every name in the book because I’ve got no back-up. It’s me and me alone that pays my bills. If I don’t come up with the cash, nobody does. So, while I lectured my sister on speaking up for herself, I acknowledged that I, too, would have stayed quiet. What we’ll do to provide for ourselves is a bit scary. Not to mention passive-aggressive, sometimes.

It can all be very traumatizing. I mean that quite seriously. Which is a shame because if fear didn’t dictate the work force, or bullies didn’t call themselves bosses, or he bottom line didn’t mean you’re fired, or lack of experience didn’t mean you’re too young, or aged-out didn’t mean, well, that you’ve aged out of the work force, I’m betting we would all do some pretty amazing things.

Remove all the insanity and fear, and you have people who are free to do what they’re designed to do. From engineers to ballet dancers, everyone could flourish.

But, there’s also this. Bettering ourselves. Climbing up the ladder of classes. Every person wants to make it to the next rung on the ladder with the thought that it might make life a bit easier. And money does make life easier, so the temptation becomes giving up what we’re passionate about so we can better ourselves. Having been on both sides of the money equation, having money is so much better than not. Having been on both sides of the work equation (love it & hated it), hating your job is so much worse than not.

We either work to live or live to work, the saying goes.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if we lived to work, and that work paid for us to live? I believe that’s what’s called “having it all,” the job we love with the paycheck that stretches.

I don’t have the answer to this, and frankly my frustration with what my sister had to endure is the nemesis for this blog post, so perhaps this is more rambling than enlightening. I’ll conclude by saying that I have chosen to do what I love though I scramble to pay the bills. If I stop to evaluate it, I come back to the same conclusion over and over: I am a gardener. It’s what I do, albeit with less money than I’d like, but with other plant geeks who make less money than what they’d like, but who aren’t cursing people out in closets. My bosses are busy watering plants. So, am I. Which seems a good thing to do on a scorching hot day when we all could use a drink.